Australia must pay £42m to migrants held in island ‘hell’

AUSTRALIA has agreed to pay £42 million in compensation to almost 2,000 migrants who claimed they suffered physical and psychological harm after being deported to a remote Pacific island and held in a detention centre likened to “hell”.

The refugees and asylum seekers settled a class-action lawsuit with the government and security firms G4S and Transfield over their detention on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

The detention centre has been labelled inhumane by aid groups and the United Nations – and Papua New Guinea’s supreme court has ruled that it should be shut down. More than 800 asylum seekers remain in the centre.

Majid Karami Kamasaee, 35, from Iran, who was the lead plaintiff in the case, said the lawsuit was bought on behalf of all those “trapped” on the island. Mr Kamasaee spent 11 months in detention there from September 2013 and is now being detained in Melbourne. “I left my home in Iran in 2013 because of religious persecution and I came to Australia seeking peace, but I was sent to Manus, which was hell,” he said. “I was in pain every minute of every day and I cried every night until I had nothing left. Today we are finally being heard.”

The government and its contractors reportedly agreed to pay £42million as well as £12million in costs, apparently preferring to avoid a public hearing into conditions at the centre. The compensation will be split among the 1,905 detainees according to their length of time at the centre and the severity of their injuries and trauma suffered during numerous riots and outbreaks of violence.

Peter Dutton, the immigration minister, said the government “strongly refutes and denies the claims made in these proceedings”. “Settlement is not an admission of liability,” he said.